From the lid of night

by Sohrab Sepehri

Night was brimming,the river climbingfrom the foot of the pines.The moon-gilt valley, and the mountain so bright that God was exposed.

Us at the heights. In turns vanished, the surface scrubbed, and a glanceslimmerthan any night.Your hands were giving me word of the green shoot,pots breaking with your slow breathand my pulsecast in stone.From an old wine, summer sand in the veinsand moongaze on your ways.You wonder, at liberty, befitting the earth.

The green shot in the courtyard, yoked to the cool air.Shadows were returningand the breeze still on the way,mint that would yieldbrimmingcolour.

Sohrab Sepehri was one of 20th-century Iran’s pioneering poets and painters and a key figure in the ‘New Poetry’ movement that broke from the previous strict formal constraints.

Patrick Sykes is a British/Irish writer and translator based in Tehran. His first chapbook, Even in the Still, was published by Wide Range in 2012, a selection of which won the Brewer Hall Prize. His poems and prose have also appeared in The White Review and Test Centre. He speaks Farsi and Turkish.